The Main Problems Plato addresses
The main problem Plato addresses can be illustrated in cases of what we call “disillusionment.”
For example: An individual is at first inspired by some person she looks up to as an embodiment of some kind of human greatness – an Olympic champion, a revolutionary, a popular singer or actor, a political leader, a parent or teacher, and so on. She takes some such person as a role model, the embodiment of some ideal of greatness that she herself wants to imitate. But then, some time later, she learns that the person she looked up to was not such a great person after all – the popular singer was a self-centered drug addict, the Olympic champion won by cheating, the great revolutionary was only hungry for personal power, the political leader was only skillful at deceiving the public, and so on. This causes her not only to stop looking up to her hero, but to lose faith in the ideals that she thought the hero represented. She becomes less idealistic and more cynical, deciding that there is no use in trying to live up to the high ideals her hero formerly inspired in her.
Another example: A person starts off believing in “true love.” She falls in love with one person, and thinks, “This is true love.” After awhile, the relationship turns sour, she decides this is not it, and breaks up. She falls in love again, and repeats the same experience. After repeating this experience several times, she becomes disillusioned, and decides “true love does not exist.” She ceases trying to work at making true love happen in her life, and just takes whatever personal gratification she can get from whatever partner she is with.
Disillusioning experiences give rise to a concept of “reality” that Americans invoke when they speak of “the real world,” or when they say “Get real.” A person might go into politics hoping to really help poor people, but then she finds out that “in the real world” politics is not like that. Observing a friend still looking for “true love,” she might advise the friend to “get real,” and realize that true love does not exist “in the real world.”
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Plato addresses this kind of problem by making a distinction between (1) ideals themselves and (2) concrete embodiments of ideals.
Suppose a fireman performs some feat that seems to me immensely courageous, and this inspires me to imitate his courage in my life. Plato would make a distinction between the fireman as a concrete person, and the Ideal Courage that the fireman seems to embody. He wants me to use examples like that of the fireman as a basis for formulating an Idea of “true courage” in my mind, but to separate the Idea of true courage from the concrete person of the fireman. I should formulate an Idea of courage which I know deserves to be the focus of my efforts to make my own actions exemplify true courage. If I subsequently find that my fireman-hero was not really that courageous after all, this would not make me disillusioned with courage itself. The ideal of courage that he inspired in me was worth devoting myself to, even if I was mistaken in thinking that this individual fireman actually exemplified this “true courage.”
Plato wants not only to abstract the Idea of courage from the concrete person of the courageous fireman. The “Idea of courage” he wants to try to formulate would be an Idea that represents courage in its most pure and excellent form. When the fireman makes a strong impression on me, for example, part of what makes a strong impression are not his courage itself but certain attention-getting things that for Plato are “accompanying appearances” of courage. For example, courage was part of the fireman’s personality before he performed a spectacular feat in a fire, and received great public recognition, fame, and rewards for doing so. The spectacular feat and the fame and rewards are more tangible compared to the courage invisibly existing in the fireman’s personality. A Platonic Idea of courage is a concept of courage stripped and purified of such accompanying appearances. Furthermore, qualities that exist in the fireman’s personality are probably a mixture of some highly admirable elements and some other elements we would not find greatly admirable. For example, highly admirable courage might be part of the motivation underlying the fireman’s courageous acts, but he also might be motivated by desire to make a good impression, which we would not find so admirable in itself. In formulating a Platonic Idea of courage, one needs to try to separate what is admirable in courage from those elements one would not find admirable, the goal being to understand what courage might be in its most excellent form.
This is why Plato holds that no concrete individual perfectly exemplifies the Idea of perfect courage. Perfect courage is something one can only perceive as an Idea in the mind.
According to normal thought habits, people tend to think of “reality” and “existence” in relatively concrete terms. Accordingly one might tend to say that the courage of the fireman “really exists,” but that Platonic Idea of courage does not really exist. But Plato insists on reversing this view. He holds on the contrary that with regard to courage, what is primarily and most “really real” (ontÇs Çn in Greek) is the perfect Idea of courage. The courage of the concrete individual fireman only “exists” in a secondary and derivative sense. It has a dependent existence, existing only to the extent that it “participates in” the Platonic Idea of courage.
Much ink has been spilled trying to make sense of this uncommonsensical notion of Plato’s. Aristotle, who spent a short time as Plato’s pupil, makes fun of this notion, because he interprets it to mean that Ideas are thing-like objects that exist in some separate realm invisible to us. This is too literal minded. I think Plato’s notion makes sense if we take “really real” to mean “what really matters.”
That is, each individual needs to maintain some sense of self-esteem, and this means each individual is constantly but half-consciously measuring herself by some standard of what it means to be a “good person.” Most commonly, people see their own lives and conduct in the context of what they perceive to be the standards of the society around them. These social standards are usually felt in a very strong and tangible form as what we usually call “social pressure.” Social pressure is very much bound up with the concretely observable behavior of large numbers of people. If I think that the actual behavior of people around me abides by some given norm of honesty, for example, this will tend to make me feel pressured to abide by the same norms. If I become disillusioned, and realize that large numbers of people around me are often dishonest, I will feel much less pressured to be honest myself. In this way, the social norms that individuals tend to judge themselves by are very closely bound up with what concretely exists “in the real world.” “The real world” refers to those forces that concretely prevail in the social world around us – what exercises power and influence, what receives recognition and reward, and so on.
But Plato is asking about what really matters. Does it really matter that I live what looks like a good life by the standards of the society around me? If my life looks good by these standards, is this a solid basis for feeling proud and satisfied with myself? If I feel embarrassed and inadequate because my life does not show up well when judged by these standards, does my embarrassment rest on some solid basis? If I am doing well in “the real world,” does this mean that I am a good person and my life is a worthwhile life? If I am not doing well in “the real world,” does this mean that I am not a good person and my life is being wasted?
Plato’s main point is that the world of tangible, concretely observable realities that most people call “the real world” is not a solid basis for judging what truly matters. If we use the word “real” to mean “providing a solid basis for evaluating one’s life,” then what we normally call “the real world” lacks solidity. What is most completely solid as a basis for evaluation, are pure Platonic Ideas, because these Ideas consist only of elements that are truly admirable.
On this interpretation, then, when Plato claims that the Ideas are “really real,” he should be taken to mean that they are solid in a moral and evaluative sense. They and not the concretely tangible social world around me should be considered “the real world,” for purposes of self-evaluation. When thinking about what truly matters, what we usually call “the real world” really counts only to the extent that people and their behavior “participates in” Platonic Ideas.
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In Plato’s thought, there exists both a positive and a negative relationship between Ideas and concrete reality.
The positive relationship consists in the fact that concrete realities are the means by which we come to know the Ideas. I only come to know what courage is by witnessing concrete acts of courage such as that of our hypothetical fireman above. In Plato’s Symposium he describes this positive function of concrete examples by analogy of a ladder. In this instance he is speaking of beauty. We first come to know what beauty is by falling in love with one beautiful body. This one beautiful body is like the bottom rung on a ladder. A person can start climbing higher on the ladder by beginning to abstract the concept “beauty” from this one beautiful body, and realizing that this same concept is exemplified in many other beautiful objects and phenomena. As she climbs, her concept of beauty comes to represent beauty in a more and more excellent form, that is also then more inspiring and enthralling. Switching metaphors, Plato pictures the person reaching the top of the ladder as the recipient of something like a religious revelation, coming to grasp the Idea of Beauty Itself, which is such a moving experience that it transforms the person and makes her an embodiment of this Beauty Itself.
One important implication of the ladder metaphor is that it does not envision any kind of immediate intuition of the Idea of Beauty, independent of any concrete perception of beautiful objects. One cannot leap to the top of the ladder, so to speak, without stepping on any of the lower rungs. Although one must not confuse Beauty Itself with any concrete beautiful objects, one can only gain knowledge of Beauty Itself by means of perceiving it in beautiful objects.
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Plato’s Republic uses the image of a cave to represent the negative relation between Ideas and concrete realities. He creates a fictional story in which a group of people have been chained to a wall in a cave since birth. They are chained facing away from the cave entrance toward a wall, and objects passing in front of the cave entrance cast shadows on this wall. Since this is the only reality they have been exposed to, they take these shadows to be “the real world.” One member of the group breaks free and climbs to the cave entrance and then into the world outside the cave. At first he is disoriented and thinks that he is in an unreal dream world, but then he realizes that the world outside the cave is the real world, and what the cave-dwellers are looking at is only shadows of objects in this real world. In Plato’s story, this person goes back inside the cave to try to free those still chained there. But they have grown attached to their shadow-world, so they become angry at his attempts and eventually kill him.
The Parable of the Cave has to do with the fact that grasping Platonic Ideas requires the difficult ability to think in abstractions – to form a mental concept of Beauty, for example, that is separate from any concrete image of a beautiful object. Human minds are such that it is much easier for them to think in concrete images. In addition, when people think about what matters in life, they tend to think in terms of very concrete goals, such as money, possessions, power and influence, tangible recognition and rewards. In Plato’s mind, being a beautiful person might bring such tangible rewards, but these are “accompanying appearances” of beauty, not Beauty Itself. Paradoxically, Ideas such as the Idea of Beauty are most really real realities, in the sense that they constitute what is truly admirable for its own sake; but these Ideas are in themselves “use-less,” in the sense that what makes them admirable is not their usefulness in bringing about tangible social rewards. These are the reasons why people are attached to conceiving of what matters in life in very concrete terms, and resist the attempts of philosophers like Socrates and Plato, to get them to seize what matters most in life by thinking in terms of Ideas abstracted from anything concrete.
In Plato’s story, the man who escaped from the cave into “the real world” of Ideas was initially disoriented. This is like the experience of mental confusion and paralysis many people have in Plato’s dialogues when Socrates tries to lead them to leave concrete examples and formulate abstract Ideas. The surprising touch at the end of the story, when the cave dwellers kill the person trying to liberate them, is Plato’s interpretation of the death of Socrates – the Athenians were so attached to their “cave-shadow” mentality that they killed Socrates who tried to teach them a philosophical means of escaping from their concrete-mindedness.
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A rational interpretation of Plato must be careful to avoid a literal-minded understanding of the contrast between concrete realities and Platonic Ideas. Such a literal-minded Platonism had a great effect on medieval Christianity, leading to conceiving of a bad “material world” and a good “spiritual world” completely separated from each other.
On a rational and contextual interpretation, the problem does not lie in the very being of physical objects and the material world. The problem is really internal and psychological – the human tendency to think only in terms of tangible realities, and the attachment to conceiving of what matters in concrete terms. This is what keeps people from a true grasp of what does really matter. Platonic “liberation” would not consist in having as little as possible to do with the material world, or escaping from the material world to a “spiritual” heaven. It would consist of an internal/psychological change, in which a person would come to orient her life around more pure abstract Ideas of Goodness, and would value concrete realities insofar as they participate in these Ideas.
This highlights the importance of Plato’s idea of “participation,” as a description of the relation between abstract Ideas and concrete reality. Consider for example the multi-dimensional concrete realities associated with “being in love,” which includes personal/spiritual communication, strong emotional connection, sharing experiences, sensual touch, and physical love-making. On the present interpretation, it would be a mistake to interpret Plato’s Idea-doctrine as supporting only the “spiritual” aspect of relationships. (I think that calling purely spiritual relationships “Platonic” is a result of this kind of mistaken literal-minded interpretation of Plato.)
The point of this doctrine is rather to encourage people to value all of the concrete aspects of a love relationship insofar as they participate in the Idea of Love. From this perspective, problems arise with regard to the sensual aspects of love only insofar as the people involved tend to value the physical aspects in ways that detract from the love itself – for example if the partners are only using each other for physical pleasure, because getting someone into bed is an ego-boosting conquest, and so on. To use more modern terms, Plato’s Idea-doctrine would encourage people to pay attention to the “meaning” of the physical aspects of love. If the meaning of love-making in a given instance is that it is a manifestation and celebration of an admirable love that enriches and raises the couples’ life to a higher level, then we should say in Plato’s language that this physical act “participates in” the Platonic Idea of love.
Platonic Ideas can in fact be seen as the result of attempts to conceptualize “meaning” itself separate from physical realities having such meaning. This should make it clear that there is no point in trying to live in the realm of Platonic Ideas instead of living in the material world. The point is rather that when we heighten the intrinsic value and meaning of our concrete involvement in the material world, this is equivalent to increasing the degree to which this involvement “participates in” Platonic Ideas of the relevant values and meaning.
Platonic “participation” is best understood as an aesthetic relationship. For example, when a person views a very moving and idealized love relationship dramatized in a play or movie, it can cause her to see their own love relationship in a new light. I highlights certain aspects of her own relationship that are similar to the idealized relationship in the movie, and these aspects appear to her as manifestations of the idealized relationship she saw on the screen. She can thus cease to see her own relationship in terms of a taken-for-granted ordinariness, and come see it as heightened in its meaning because it “participates in” the inspiring and idealized relationship pictured in the fictional story.
This should make it clear that Platonic Ideas should not be thought of as “goals” to be achieved. To achieve a goal is to concrete realize it in its fullness in one’s life. To think of making a Platonic Idea a concrete reality in one’s life is contrary to the very concept of a Platonic Idea, part of whose essence is that it is not a concrete reality.
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One commonly overlooked implication of Plato’s Idea doctrine is that enforceable social laws and social pressure can by nature never exactly represent true values. This is because enforceable social laws and social pressure are by nature focused on easily observable and concrete external behavior. A person can only be forced by law, or pressured by society, to behave in certain ways easily observable by the general public. Neither law-enforcement officials or the general public can see into a person’s soul to tell whether her actions are motivated by the true inner goodness or by other less worthy motives. They can only observe her concrete behavior.
Plato’s main point is that nothing concrete and easily observable can be an exact and unambiguous representation of pure Goodness. Pure Goodness can only be precisely and unambiguously represented in the form of abstract Ideas. Laws and social pressure can at best “participate” to a greater or lesser extent in Platonic Ideas.
This runs contrary to an important strand of modern Western utopianism that frequently motivates social criticism today. By “utopianism” I am referring to the assumption that people have a right to expect that social pressure in their society should represent true values. On this assumption, for example, the fact that people feel pressured by American society into being materialistic is an abnormal situation that can and should be remedied. We have a right to expect that social pressure should not pressure people to be materialistic.
If the present interpretation of Plato is correct, one of its important implications is that this expectation is impossible to fulfill. The objectionable character of social pressure in our society is not due to anything abnormal or remediable about our society, but is part of the nature of social pressure itself, necessarily accompanying the fact that all social pressure focuses on concrete external behavior.
If we think of “alienation” as the feeling that the conventional norms of one’s society are not fully deserving of respect, are not good representations of what really matters, then a good Platonist should feel alienated from her society (as Plato certainly felt alienated from Athenian society of his time.) Not only this, but she should regard this as a normal condition, something that cannot be remedied in the future by fundamental social reform. Commitment to the Platonic Idea of Justice should motivate her to press for a more just society (a society whose norms participate in the Platonic Idea of justice to a greater degree), but should not lead her to expect that she will someday live in a non-alienating situation in which there is no substantial gap between Idea and reality.
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The relation between concrete reality and abstract Ideas is the context in which we must understand Plato’s idea of a “spiritual soul,” whose misinterpretation has been so influential in Western thought, through first permeating religious thought in the Judaic, Islamic, and Christian traditions.
I say “misinterpretation,” because the tendency has been to concretize the idea of a spiritual soul – as though it were a thing-like entity, just made of “spiritual stuff” rather than “material stuff.” On this view, people are composed of material things like arms and legs, a heart and lungs, and also of a “spiritual thing” called a “soul.” We can see in Plato’s writings (in the Phaedo, for example) the beginnings of this kind of literal-minded understanding, but this I think is where Plato leaves off rational discourse and starts creating semi-religious dogma.
Speaking rationally, the substance of Plato’s idea of the spiritual soul is based on use of the terms “Reason” (logos) or “Mind” (Nous) to represent the mind’s capacity to grasp abstract Platonic Ideas.
A Platonic Idea of Beauty is a mental concept separated from any concrete beautiful object or image. It is the result of separating the “spiritual essence” of Beauty from beautiful objects visible in the material world. Similarly, a person’s mind can be thought of as having a “materialistic” side, a side governed by the tendency to think only in terms of concrete objects. It is also possible, though difficult, to develop the “spiritual” capacity of one’s mind, which consists precisely in the ability to grasp and be at home with “spiritual Ideas.”
Plato appeals to those people who are unable to find satisfaction in the world thought of in materialistic terms – materialistic interests do not “satisfy their soul.” In the ideal case, Platonic Ideas will be “soul satisfying.” This is not automatic. If one person formulates a Platonic Idea of Beauty in her mind, then describes the content of this Idea to another person, the second person might not find this idea inspiring or soul-satisfying. In the Seventh Letter, Plato emphasizes that Ideas cannot be conveyed in this purely intellectual way from one person to another. He says that an Idea is something more like a vision that dawns on a person’s mind after long personal involvement in the process of considering concrete examples and extracting the spiritual essence from them, through “Socratic inquiry” to be described below. This calls attention to fact that in Greek the word idea means “something seen” (from idein, “to see”). In Plato’s thought, an idea not just an intellectual concept, but is something concretely seen, something concretely experienced in the mind, transforming the person who sees it. So in some contexts Plato’s idea is better translated as a quasi-religious “vision.”
I would add: What ideally happens in the process of prolonged engagement in Socratic inquiry is that a person actualizes more and more that part of herself that finds satisfaction in pure Goodness, acquiring a more refined taste for pure Goodness, so to speak, and becoming less “materialistic”-minded in her concepts of what matters in life. This internal psycho-spiritual development is a necessary condition for the experiential dawning in one’s mind of a Platonic Idea, a personally transforming “Vision” of a the pure essence of some kind of Goodness.
A capacity of mind developed in this way is what Plato calls “Reason” (logos) or “Mind” (Nous). I think it is also the best interpretation of his concept of a “spiritual soul.” That is, the “soul” is not a thing-like entity, but is an image of the capacity to fully experience Platonic Ideas. Everyone has this potential capacity, but not everyone develops this Platonic “soul.”
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“Platonism” is today associated with moral absolutes – the belief that in the realm of virtues, for example, all possible kinds of human goodness can be reduced to one small set of virtues, and there is only one correct definition giving the timeless essence of each of these virtues. Such Platonism is at odds with the general tendency of modern thought, which emphasizes that concepts of human goodness legitimately vary from culture to culture, historical era to historical era, an even from individual to individual.
At the same time, relativism presents modern thinkers with something of a quandary, because it is commonly assumed that the alternative to a belief in absolutes is some kind of “relativism.” Relativism is a problem because it seems to imply that all moral judgements are based on factors that we would not normally regard as having any binding force. One common way of putting this is that all moral judgements are based only on “social conditioning.” A person who realizes this would realize that social conditioning itself has no solid basis – it is just the result of arbitrary decisions on the part of some social group who then impose their decisions on others. The person who realizes this would feel free to make her own arbitrary decisions about what truly matters. These decisions are arbitrary and without any ultimate basis, but no more arbitrary and base-less than decisions made by her society.
Relativism of this kind, consistently carried out, results in the view that there can be no criticism of moral norms. For example, one can criticize the view that the earth is flat by appealing to physical evidence that it is round; a perfectly consistent relativism would hold that there is no equivalent basis for criticizing Hitler’s idea that it is morally good to kill all the Jews, since all moral norms are ultimately the result of base-less arbitrary decisions. Relativism carried this far is sometimes called “nihilism” (from Latin nihil, nothing), because this amounts to saying that there is no such thing as morality.
Very few thinkers call themselves “relativists” in this sense, because few want to consistently carry out the relativist principle to this extreme. But it has been assumed for many centuries that moral norms can have no real basis unless that basis consists in a single set of timeless truths. If this assumption holds, it seems difficult to reject the idea of timeless truths and still avoid relativism.
I want to propose here an interpretation of Plato that avoids this dilemma. What I propose can perhaps best be called “critical pluralism.”
-“Pluralism” indicates that there is not just one valid view, but an indefinite plurality of valid views about what constitutes human Goodness.
-“Critical” indicates that, while there is no single valid view on this subject, there are many views that lack validity, and there is a mode of critical reasoning capable of differentiating more valid from less valid views. “Socratic inquiry,” described below, is one method of critical reasoning capable of doing this.
The key point in this critical-pluralist Platonism is that there is a Platonic Idea for any given concept of human excellence, but that there is a potentially limitless number of such concepts to choose from. There are thousands of ways of leading a great life, thousands of potentially valid concepts of what a great life consists in. One can lead a great life by being extraordinarily courageous, loving, tender, tough, dedicated, easy-going, calm, energetic, passionate, optimistic, realistic, wise, daring, responsible, happy, dutiful, creative, obedient, and so on. Including concepts from all the world’s languages and cultures, past and present, would greatly extend this list, and there are possible great ways of being human yet to be discovered. No single person can exhibit in her life all possible kinds of greatness, and there is no rational way to decide on a single small set of core virtues that is obligatory for all. What stands in the way of belief in a single universally binding moral standard is not that there are no universally valid truths about human goodness, but that there are too many such truths. This prevents any single small set of such truths from constituting a singularly authoritative standard for all people everywhere. A human life that is not great by some one set of valid standards might be great when seen in the light of a completely different set of equally valid standards. This is the basis for “pluralist” Platonism.
Traditionally, those wanting to establish absolute moral truths have focused on the task of choosing one small set of concepts for defining such truths, and excluding all the others. Immanuel Kant, for example, wanted to focus on concepts defining moral duties, and criticized others such as Aristotle who took the desire for happiness as the focal point for his moral philosophy. Moral inquiry in Plato’s writings has a completely different focus. From this point of view, choosing to focus on some given concept of human excellence is only a starting point for real “Socratic” inquiry illustrated in Plato’s writings. Plato provides no rational way of deciding which concepts to focus on. He tends to focus on a small set of concepts highly regarded in contemporary Athenian society, but gives no rational arguments for this choice. The fact that no one else has come up with a rational way of deciding on some single set of concepts, and excluding others, is the basis for modern pluralist “respect for diversity,” and the main obstacle faced by those who want to uphold a single set of moral absolutes.
Plato has no rational arguments that stand in the way of such pluralism. The model of “Socratic” critical inquiry that he proposes is compatible with such pluralism, because this critical inquiry has a different focus. If one chooses “happiness” as a topic for inquiry, for example, one is faced with the task of refining one’s concept of happiness. For instance, the word “happiness” might refer to the euphoric feeling one has when taking drugs, but it is hard to argue that a life devoted to this kind of “happiness” is a truly admirable life. Not everything that comes to mind in connection with the ordinary concept “happiness” is something truly admirable. This will be true no matter what concept one chooses to focus on. Every word or concept one might choose is ambiguous with regard to what is truly admirable. Rational “Socratic” inquiry into happiness consists precisely in zeroing in on only those associations with “happiness” that designate something truly admirable, and excluding those things that are mere “accompanying appearances” of happiness. The difficult ideal goal toward which such critical inquiry moves would be a “Platonic Idea” of Happiness. This is the “critical” part of critical-pluralist Platonism.
This interpretation of Plato would indeed validate the modern American feeling that “everyone should be able to choose for themselves what truly matters in life,” without however validating just any choice anyone might make. That is, one cannot set up limits ahead of time on what categories or concepts a person might use to define what truly matters. But not this Platonism would not justify just any interpretation anyone might give to the category they chose. For example, if someone wants to say that “making a million dollars” precisely defines what finally matters in life, Socratic critical reasoning could show that she is mistaken, unless she wants to agree that anyone who “makes a million dollars” is truly admirable, no matter how many awful things she does to gain this money. (If a contract killer made a million dollars by killing her, she would have to agree that this was a truly admirable person.)
There might be a “Platonic Idea” of the concept “making a million dollars,” but it would have to consist precisely and only of elements that make a person truly admirable. It may be, for example, that what someone finds highly admirable is actually several human qualities exhibited in the ambition, and in the effort, to make a million dollars (the virtues of ambition, hard work, courage, and so on). It might be rationally defensible, then, to hold that a refined concept of each of these virtues is what might make a life a great life.
This interpretation of Plato takes seriously what Plato has Socrates say in the Theaetetus, comparing himself to a midwife. In this passage he says that he has nothing to teach anyone, nothing to “put into” anyone. He only draws out of people what is already there inside of them, like a midwife delivering a pregnant woman of the child in her womb. In the same way, one part of Socratic reasoning consists in articulating in one’s own words one’s own feelings about what truly matters in life. A person should not look outside herself for some authority to tell her what truly matters, and she does not have to answer to anyone for the choice she makes. An important part of Socratic inquiry is getting in touch with and articulating carefully one’s own feelings about what is truly admirable and what truly matters in life.
A second part of Socratic reasoning, of course, consists in a critical testing of the concepts one has “brought to birth” (Plato compares this to a midwife examining the child to see if it is alive or stillborn). Everyone making her own choice of basic concepts leads to pluralism. Testing and refining these basic concepts leads to critical pluralism.
Emphasizing this point, one should say that Plato’s goal is not to “teach philosophy” (teach his own philosophical ideas) but to teach individuals to philosophize, to be philosophers unto themselves. The goal would be a version of what modern philosophers call “rational autonomy.” To be “autonomous” is to be self-ruled (from Greek autos=self, nomos=rule.) To have rational autonomy is not to rule oneself by just any norms arbitrarily decided on, but by norms that a person herself has subjected to thorough rational and critical examination.
I think this pluralist Platonism is important today because modern times has brought about a fundamental shift in people’s life experience, and a corresponding shift in those human qualities and aspects of life that they perceive and experience to matter most. The change can be described roughly as follows:
In premodern times, people were subject to many more physical hardships than they are today, and this meant that there were many more occasions in which people were tempted to solve their problems by breaking minimal rules of human decency (lying, cheating, stealing, etc.) Wealthy people tend to break the law less, not because they are more virtuous than poor people, but because it’s generally easier for them to get through life reasonably well without breaking the law. Consequently, traditional concepts of “virtue” that arose in these conditions emphasized self-discipline and self-restraint, virtues required for persons needing to restrain themselves from doing wrong. This resulted in emphasizing such virtues as courage, fairness, chastity, obedience, concern for others, moderation, and so on.
Such virtues are still important on some occasions today, but most people who are relatively well off do not face a great need for these self-restraining virtues on a daily basis. Consequently, people’s experience of what makes a human life a great life has shifted from a focus on heroic self-discipline to what might be called “self-fulfillment.” Under self-fulfillment I would include such things as: intimate relationships, enriching experiences with nature, living intensely, being creative, passionate pursuit of one’s dreams, being spontaneous, “being oneself,” engaging in meaningful work and taking pride in one’s work, and so on. None of these things were included in traditional lists of virtues, and so do not easily come to mind when one thinks of the word “virtue.” But there is no reason why these cannot be taken as subjects for Socratic Inquiry, no reason to suppose that there is no “Platonic Idea” of each of these concepts. Even Plato, for example, did not restrict his concern to what we associate with the word “virtue.” He used the Greek term art, which is better translated “[human] excellence.” Modern people usually do not consider beauty a “virtue,” but In the Symposium Plato speaks of Beauty (to kalos) as an art.
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